Blog Post #114: Finding Wisdom in Suffering
On our podcast, we recently talked to Elizabeth Lesser, New York Times best-selling author of Broken Open and a founder of the renowned Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY. She shared wonderful insight on finding purpose and wisdom in our suffering. Here’s a summary of our conversation (see podcast version here):
Type C people have a false belief that if you do everything for others, that means you love them. It’s a bit of hubris to assume we know what other people really want.
Elizabeth fell into a pattern of people-pleasing at a young age, and especially as a young mother. After her divorce, she felt tremendous guilt, leading her to try even harder to make her children happy all the time.
To give someone what they seem to want all the time does not necessarily equal love. Sometimes they need honesty, or clarity, or boundaries.
Elizabeth created a meditation she called the do no harm and take no sh*t meditation. It’s about the balance between doing what you have to do (boundaries) and compassion, being open. If we’re only being open to others, we’re going to get run over. It’s a tough world out there. But if we’re only setting boundaries and only focusing on ourselves, we’re turning into a**holes.
The idea that life is supposed to be pain free is a false notion, life is full of opportunities to fall down and get hurt. We somehow think it’s not supposed to happen to us. We have to stop resisting what is natural.
A huge amount of suffering is not the actual thing that happened, it’s the resisting it, the not wanting it to happen. Elizabeth experienced this in a visceral way as a midwife early in her career. Resisting the pain of labor elongates it and makes it so much worse. Opening to the pain can instead make way for new life.
We are all facing difficulties - people getting sick, people dying, job stress. On the other side of the pain, perhaps something new wants to be born. The more we resist, the more painful it’s going to be. If we stay open, there is usually wisdom on the other side.
Anxiety is a normal response to pain, it’s trying to keep us from danger. But, what we resist persists - and what opportunities for growth could the pain bring?
Elizabeth talks in her book about the Phoenix Process - this goes back to ancient myths about a bird called the phoenix who felt change coming. For the change to really occur, he had to die. We can use this as a metaphor - there are things within us that must die – beliefs, behaviors, reactions, thought patterns, unhealthy relationships. We must let them die in order to grow. We die to our problems and get our ego out of the way, the resistance to change. Life will ask us to be the phoenix over and over.
One example for Elizabeth was her children getting older and leaving the nest. She was clinging to their childhoods instead of helping them step into adulthood and letting go, having faith in their abilities to navigate the world.
It can be easier to hold on tight, to complain, to cling to the old ways, to start self-medicating instead of sitting in the fire and stepping boldly into new life, new ways.
Letting our Type C mind-based rules die is not easy because there will be a lot of fear. In our minds, these rules have kept us safe (and this was true as children). Letting these rules die takes tremendous bravery.
There may come a time when we simply can’t risk living in the old ways any longer, we feel we might die. Maybe we are in a health crisis, a toxic relationship or a soul-sucking job. We can re-frame the story we have about the pain. Every pain has its partner of wisdom and new life.
Everyone experiences the human adventure. We suffer, and if we are open to it, we can use that suffering as fuel for growth. Every great story follows this same narrative. There’s nothing wrong with you, you just need some skills to get through this.
Elizabeth recommends Type C people look into the work of Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh, master of “do no harm” - specifically, his book Being Peace. She also recommends the work of Pema Chodron and The Four Agreements book by Mexican shaman Don Miguel Ruiz.
Find Elizabeth on her website, elizabethlesser.org, her Instagram @elizlesser, and on the Omega Institute website, www.eomega.org.